The difficulty implementing a strong and effective deterrence against a terrorist or rogue state's use of the commercial ocean cargo container as a delivery vehicle for a nuclear weapon continues to trouble the responsible experts. Especially worrisome is growth of nuclear capable states. Nuclear capable states under duress, acting alone or in cooperation with terrorists, conceivably could adopt a clandestine container delivery tactic, rather than a more easily monitored long range missile system. A container delivery vector is inexpensive, operationally simple, accurate and possibly untraceable.
Overview of Current Policy
Current Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defense architecture envisions layered but modest container deterrence as the best defense that it can muster today. The core of the plan is to approach near 100% container inspections in the U.S. arrival ports with advanced radiation portals. A portal is a drive-bye radiation sensor. Advanced means the portals will try to read the radiation spectrum that is essentially a fingerprint of the type of radioactive material that is the target of the inspection, hoping to cut down on the many false alarms that currently plague portal inspections. The General Accounting Office (GAO) questioned whether the new sensors do measurably reduce false alarms. However, the problems facing portal inspections are much deeper than false alarms; and are twofold: First, even an advanced sensor cannot detect a nuclear bomb if the nuclear device is shielded with only modest shielding. The DHS director has recently acknowledged this limitation in Congressional testimony. An adversary intent on executing a nuclear terrorist attack could easily shield its clandestine weapon and adopt a “detonate on detection” counter-strategy (discussed infra) as further protection. Every U.S. port is in a city and inspection after arrival in a U.S. port city is too late. This troubling fact is supported by efforts of the Department of Homeland Security which is working with the Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Customs Service to try to push back the “inspection borders” out of the U.S. and into those of our trading partners. The reality that the U.S. is trying to export its problem to its trading partners is not lost on U.S. trading partners.
Detonation on Detection Dilemma
A few U.S. ports, aware of detonate on arrival or detection, are trying to intercept ships before entry into their ports. In Charleston, S.C., for example, a recent disaster exercise posited an intercepted container detonating during attempts to interdict after arrival in Charleston. The disaster planning event posited tens of thousands of casualties.
Problems with Foreign Inspection
Export of the inspection risk to foreign trading partners has also been fraught with problems and slow implementation. There are a number of acronym-titled programs (CPAT, CSI, etc) in process, but at the core is a reluctance of foreign governments to readily adopt an effective inspection process in their ports. The reasons are both obvious and subtle and range from high direct costs, slowing the flow of commerce, possible foreign legal liability for failure to detect, sovereignty issues of ancillary U.S. activity in a foreign country and U.S. uncertainty of system reliability in some countries that the U.S. would characterize as less friendly trading partners. After all, the actual inspection work and intelligence information comes from the foreign government and port operator security and not from U.S. personnel or agencies. In summary, foreign countries inspect only 10-20% of all of the port container traffic involving the U.S. and these countries do not wish to accept the inspection risk and delays that will impact on not just that 20% of container traffic but on all commerce. Thus the U.S. has a problem with a defense architecture based upon an inspection protocol that is scheduled to reach near 100% of all containers being inspected in the U.S. where it is too late to avoid “detonate upon detection” and using technical procedures that will not be able to detect realistic attacks. Meaningful attempts to export these inspections to foreign countries are probably unworkable as presently constructed. There is foreign information sharing and confidence building concepts like CSI and safe shipper programs that are useful but do not reach the core risk or the scope of the commercial issues either.
A long term solution from the Department of Homeland Security is to develop advanced density measuring x-ray systems that are very large versions of the baggage inspection equipment used in airports. Unfortunately, not only are these systems very expensive and as of yet technically un-proven, but they would be as large as car washes, be relatively slow in completed inspections and have to be located in foreign countries to solve the “detonate on detection” dilemma. This technology can be implemented only in the distant future and would be very uncertain in performance and scalability. It is desirable to have a method to detect contraband radioactive or nuclear material before suspect cargo reaches the U.S. because foreign ports cannot be widely enlisted for near 100% inspection levels overseas and because of the as-yet unsolved reliability of inspections of less friendly trading partners.